Of Love and Family

A growing number of Latino families resort to non-traditional ways to form a family.

En español | Miguel, a New York labor leader, met the boy who would become his son in his own living room. The five-year-old named Juan would sit quietly on Miguel's couch as his mother, the housekeeper, went about cleaning her client's house. About a decade later, Miguel heard the housekeeper was in trouble. Lost to drugs and bad relationships, the Ecuadorean woman was living in a basement. Her three teenage boys had scattered.

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"I remember there was a snowstorm, and I found him all wet and shivering, brought him home, and gave him the couch to sleep on. I figured he'd be here for a few days, but he never left," says Miguel, a Cuban American, who agreed to share his story only if the family name was not revealed.

Now 63, Miguel ended up adopting Juan and his two older brothers. With their birth mother released from jail and rebuilding her life, Miguel's sons—who are now in their twenties—have asked him to help take care of her. She lives in a small apartment in the family's backyard in New Jersey.

And thus another American family was born. Miguel's family is part of a contemporary mosaic that, due to circumstance, medical advances, and changing social mores, allows a more fluid definition of family: single parents, adopted children, children conceived outside the womb, two fathers or two mothers, multiple parents and stepparents, or no parents at all, just grandparents.

That fluidity is a perfect fit for the Latino soul. It's common to hear about someone's grandmother, back in the old country, rearing a kid from the neighborhood because the child's family had too many mouths to feed. The term hijo de crianza doesn't translate to foster child, but it's the same concept: A grownup takes charge of a child because no one else can.

"In the old times, in our countries we didn't need papers to do what we do now," says Dr. José Szapocznik, director of the Center for Family Studies and associate dean for community development at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. "But now, while we can formally adopt, what we don't do is care for someone who, for whatever reason, needs to be cared for by a family other than his or her own."

And so U.S. Latinos are seeking to make families in more formal ways. The number of Hispanic couples seeking to adopt has increased, as has the number of Hispanics turning to reproductive science and surrogacy to produce a child.

Chosen Children

"Within the last year, the number of Hispanics seeking to adopt has grown to the point that we've noticed a trend," says Vickye Schultz, senior vice president of domestic adoption and human resources at the Gladney Center for Adoption in Fort Worth, Texas.

About eight years ago, Barbara Gutiérrez was one of those Hispanics. Gutiérrez had always wanted to be a mother, but her career kept her single and childless until, shocked by loneliness after her father's death, she decided to become a single mom.